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Globaia.org has put together a great video of the impact humanity has had on the world over the past several hundred years. I think the worst part has to be the fact that CO2 levels in the atmosphere today are higher than they’ve been in the past million years or so. But hey. Maybe it’s just coincidence, amirite?
Filed under: Biology, Science | Tagged: Globaia, Welcome to the Anthropocene | 1 Comment »
Filed under: Science | Tagged: Adam Savage, TED | Leave a comment »
I’m a movie fan and I certainly have enjoyed the work of James Cameron, but I’ve never thought of him as awesome. Of course Titanic was great. And, despite the storyline not being anything new, Avatar was visually spectacular (especially since I saw it in an IMAX). And I guess he’s done other stuff? I don’t know, but that’s what IMDB claims. Anyway, as far as I know, he’s a pretty good director. For that, I view him favorably. But for what he’s about to do I’ve already decided I view him as just fantastic:
In the coming weeks, the director of “Titanic” and “Avatar” will climb inside the Deepsea Challenger, a single-pilot submersible vehicle he helped design, and dive to the Challenger Deep, the lowest point in the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean 200 miles southwest of Guam. Once he’s there he plans to spend six hours on the ocean floor collecting scientific samples and filming for a 3-D theatrical feature documentary that will also be broadcast on the National Geographic Channel.
This will be just the fourth time any man-made craft has gone that deep and just the second time any person will find themselves submerged so far. The first time people sunk to the bottom of the Mariana Trench was in 1960 when U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard took on the challenge. Once they hit the bottom, they found they had disturbed some bottom-dwelling fish. This was incredible. Just a handful of decades earlier it was still thought that no life could exist below about 2,000 feet. The thinking was that no light could ever penetrate that deeply, so there would be no viable ecosystem that far down. The first trans-Atlantic communications cables to be pulled up for repairs, however, were found to be encrusted with barnacles. They had been laying about 2 miles beneath the surface.
Fast forward the better part of a century and we’ve discovered, with the movement of that bottom-dwelling fish and a few shrimp, that life can exist anywhere underwater. Just anywhere. But here’s the crazy thing: We have been able to send people to the bottom of the ocean for longer than we’ve been able to send them to the moon, yet we’ve visited the latter far more times than we’ve even seen the former, much less visited it. And isn’t that bizarre? Imagine we knew nothing of the flora and fauna of a place like California and in order to learn about it all we send a couple of non-scientists to take a quick glance at the first few forms of life they see. That’s a fair approximation of how much we know about the Mariana Trench. Don’t we want to know more about all the life that exists in this amazingly exotic locale?
I’m glad that not only is a human going to once again visit such an incredible place, but that this human happens to be a big-name celebrity. Who knows what this will do for deep-sea exploration, but at the very least it will get the attention of people who normally would never know anything about any of this. Education is fun. I can’t wait to read about the experience and see the video.
Filed under: News, Science | Tagged: Jacques Piccard, James Cameron, Mariana Trench, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh | Leave a comment »
The Vermont Senate on Friday passed and sent to the House a bill that would end the philosophical exemption from the requirement that parents get their children a series of vaccinations before they enter school.
But a religious exemption would remain in place, and senators and state Health Department officials agreed that there are no standards in Vermont law for what constitutes religious belief.
There are definite pros and cons to this bill. The overwhelming pro is that it sends the message that vaccinations are important to the health of children. This should help to counter some of the anti-vax rhetoric that still pervades much of the Western world as if none of us have ever heard of medicine or science. The biggest con, however, is that the actual implication of the bill is impotent. Vermont does not put itself in the place of determining what constitutes a legitimate religious belief, so anyone can simply lie on a form to exempt their child from good health.
And, of course, there is the issue of giving the religious special rights. This bill creates a divide which says that religious beliefs are more important than philosophical beliefs. It’s reminiscent of the hoops through which the military puts pacifists during a draft versus what they require of, say, the Amish. It’s not only morally and logically abhorrent, but I doubt it’s constitutional.
But there is an upside. Aside from the obvious health benefits, this could be a stepping stone to outlawing the religious from exempting their children, much like DADT acted as a stepping stone to what we have today. It’s probably wishful thinking, but it’s possible. Religious liberty is not unlimited, after all. (If you think it is, try sending your child to school completely nude on the basis that it is part of your religion.)
Filed under: News, Science | Tagged: Vaccination, Vermont | 8 Comments »
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I have often found myself contemplating which is more amazing, the sheer scale of the Universe or the complexity of life? It isn’t easy to find an answer, but I’ll do my best to very briefly explain my thinking on this.
Despite my field being biology, and despite finding nothing more amazing on Earth than the evolution and subsequent complexity of life, I have to fall on the side of the size of the Universe. I think I’m going to be in the minority on this one, but I’ve given it some thought. Here is why I think what I do.
It isn’t possible for an individual to know everything about a single field. I’ve had incredible biology professors who have told me that they are lucky to understand 1/3 of what they read in scientific journal articles concerning biology. This is because in order to become an expert on anything, it requires one to focus on a relatively small subset of facts within a field. Just look at how biology breaks down: microbiology, biochemistry, genetics, cell biology, zoology, botany, anatomy, physiology, embryology, evolutionary biology, molecular biology, and so on. This sort of division is going to be true of just about any field. (I can’t think of any exceptions.) How can we expect anyone to understand it all? We simply cannot. But that isn’t to say we can’t understand it all as a species. In principle, we can understand everything that has to do with biology. We can break it down and analyze each bit, no matter how esoteric and specific. That doesn’t mean we necessarily ever will, but there is nothing preventing us from doing so. We have the ability, when we pool all our resources and minds, to understand everything there is to understand about life and its evolution.
I don’t think we can say that same thing about the sheer scale of the Universe. For the sake of argument, I will limit myself to the observable Universe. But right there. Look at what I just did. Without fear of losing any ground in my argument, I limited my scope. Yet my whole point is scope. That’s just how huge the Universe is. And how can anyone truly appreciate that? No human is going to travel any distance from Earth that is notable on the scale of the Universe. Even our space probes that are now on their way to interstellar space have done so little; being impressed by that distance would be like being impressed that an atom moved a tiny fraction of a fraction of a fraction of its radius to the right. I would say to now imagine that analogy increased trillions upon trillions upon trillions upon…of times, but of course you can’t. No one can. We don’t have any way, in our small lives, to really comprehend something like that. The Universe is enormous. Just enormous.
We can pool our minds together as a species and come to a great understanding of all that surrounds us. All our physicists and astronomers and cosmologists can give us a tremendous understanding, via science, of how it all works. They can even describe, with numbers on paper, how large the observable Universe is. They can show us incredible pictures of thousands of galaxies (in just a small sliver of the sky), each with billions of stars and billions of planets. And it really all is wonderful. But no matter how many brilliant minds we put to the task, we can never appreciate the sheer scale of what is. It is, in every meaning of the word, beyond us.
Filed under: Astronomy/Cosmology/Physics, Biology, Science | Tagged: Astronomy, Biology, Cosmology, Evolution, physics, Scale of the Universe, Science | 2 Comments »
Today marks the 203rd anniversary of one of the most important scientists to have ever lived. I pity those who can’t recognize his greatness.
Filed under: Evolution, Science | Tagged: charles darwin | Leave a comment »
Why, reality, of course.
If that seems like a simple answer, it’s because the answer is simple. We could break everything down, get more particular, explore general concepts, use specific examples, etc. That would give us a better understanding of how science works, but the answer to the question of with what it is science deals is the same: reality. Unfortunately, not everyone understands this:
Science is great for material things, but by definition it doesn’t deal with immaterial things.
This comes from our friend Neil. I usually reserve him for use in my “Punching Bags” series, but I’m actually still trawling his comment section to find more unique bloggers (not to mention bloggers who actually dare to defend their positions). As a result, I’m not particularly reading his writing – in fact, I’m not going to bother reading the rest of his post – but the above comment did catch my eye. It represents a weak mind.
Making the point that science only deals with material things, not immaterial things, is like saying science only deals with material things, not unicorns. It’s a meaningless statement. Unless, that is, Neil has provided evidence for the immaterial. But wait! Then he would have to use the material world and thus science. Since, by definition, he cannot use these things to study the immaterial (or unicorns), his views are fundamentally anti-science. In fact, the same goes for absolutely anyone who believes in the supernatural. It’s just kooky thinking.
Filed under: Science | Tagged: 4simpsons, Neil, Science | 1 Comment »
For the Sake of Science 